The Case Of George Floyd

On the 25th of May, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek responded to a 911 call alleging that a man was attempting to use a forged banknote. When Derek arrived at the scene he handcuffed the man suspected of forgery and pinned him to the ground. It was at this time that Derek was captured on video with his knee on the neck of the African-American man named George Floyd. By the end of the video, Floyd goes limp and health officials later pronounced him dead.

This is not the first incident of this type of police brutality. Police officers in these types of cases are rarely prosecuted due to an idea known as qualified immunity which was set forward by the United States Supreme Court in 1967. In the 1967 ruling on police violence towards civil rights demonstrators in Mississippi, The court ruled that police officers could only be found guilty if their actions were found to be similar to previously encountered cases in which the officer was found guilty. This made it incredibly difficult to prosecute police brutality.